South Africa’s High Court ordered President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday to pay legal costs for trying to avoid a demand from the anti-corruption watchdog for an official inquiry into alleged influence-peddling in his government.

“He is ordered to personally pay the costs,” High Court Judge President Dunstan Mlambo said.

The court is due to rule later on whether Mr. Zuma is legally compelled by the public protector to set up the inquiry.

NAN reports the South African National Prosecuting Authority, NPA, on Monday extended the deadline for President Jacob Zuma to submit arguments on why he should not be prosecuted for corruption.

“They must submit their representation on January 31, 2018,” said NPA spokesman Luvuyo Mfaku.

The 783 charges against Mr. Zuma relate to a 30 billion rand (2.20 billion dollars) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s.

They were filed but then dropped by the NPA shortly before he ran for the presidency.

NAN reports that a South African High Court reinstated the charges in 2016 and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Mr. Zuma and describing the NPA’s decision to set aside the charges as “irrational”.

The NPA said then that Mr. Zuma had until November 30 to make submissions before it decided whether to pursue the charges.

Spokesmen for the NPA and Mr. Zuma were not available for comment.

In October, the Supreme Court ruling lifted the rand currency against the dollar as investors bet that Zuma’s removal may be inching closer.

The president is unpopular with many investors after sacking respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan in March, a move that hit South African financial assets and helped tip the country’s credit ratings into “junk” territory.

Infighting within the ruling ANC ahead of next month’s conference to elect a successor to Mr. Zuma as party chief has also sapped confidence among the investors upon whom South Africa relies to finance its hefty budget and current account deficits.

One of South Africa’s leading universities, the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said on Thursday that it had appointed Mr. Gordhan as a visiting professor.

He will join other ANC heavyweights, who have ended up at the Wits after being sidelined by Zuma, among them another respected and ousted finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, and former Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni.

Widely seen as a competent and honest technocrat, Mr. Gordhan has become an unlikely poster boy for public anger at the president, whose administration has been marred by missteps and allegations of corruption.

President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to ban Venezuela’s new national cryptocurrency, the petro. It’s the first cryptocurrency-related executive order a president has issued and another blow to an already dubious virtual token that’s supposedly backed by oil reserves, as Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro has said.

The National Chairman of the Action Peoples Party, Ikenga Ugochinyere, on Monday stated that Nigeria is at the brink of total collapse under President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress administration.

South Korea’s National Security Adviser, Chung Eui-yong, says North Korean President, Kim Jong Un, has agreed to halt nuclear and ballistic missile testing while dialogue is ongoing between North Korea and the US.

Ahead of Zimbabwe's crucial elections this year, the biggest opposition party has selected a charismatic lawyer and pastor to challenge the military-backed president in the first vote without former leader Robert Mugabe in decades.